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allowed to deal with that part of the trial which the law al-
locates them, and they usually know less about the results of
their work after it’s left them than the defence does, even
though the defence will usually stay in contact with the ac-
cused until the trial is nearly at its end, so that the court
officials can learn many useful things from the defence.
Bearing all this in mind, does it still surprise K. that the of-
ficials are irritated and often express themselves about the
litigants in unflattering ways which is an experience shared
by everyone. All the officials are irritated, even when they
appear calm. This causes many difficulties for the junior ad-
vocates, of course. There is a story, for instance, that has
very much the ring of truth about it. It goes like this: One of
the older officials, a good and peaceful man, was dealing
with a difficult matter for the court which had become very
confused, especially thanks to the contributions from the
lawyers. He had been studying it for a day and a night with-
out a break as these officials are indeed hard working,
no-one works as hard as they do. When it was nearly morn-
ing, and he had been working for twenty-four hours with
probably very little result, he went to the front entrance,
waited there in ambush, and every time a lawyer tried to en-
ter the building he would throw him down the steps. The
lawyers gathered together down in front of the steps and
discussed with each other what they should do; on the one
hand they had actually no right to be allowed into the build-
ing so that there was hardly anything that they could
legally do to the official and, as I’ve already mentioned, they
would have to be careful not to set all the officials against

1 The Trial